Why ‘The Boys’ Deserves Way More Recognition
photo courtesy of @theboystv Instagram
Ever since Amazon Prime released ‘The Boys’ over two years ago on their streaming service, the show has gripped many comic and superhero fans all around the world. ‘The Boys’ revolves around the story of Hugie as he befriends societal outcasts in a quest to take down Vought, a company that markets real-life superheroes in a world where superhuman abilities exist. With its wicked, black humor and eye-popping (both literally and metaphorically) storyline, the adapted comic book series has made fans look forward to the adventures of Hugie and his rebel band of anti-hero friends. The show has been repeatedly applauded for its complex storyline, which truly explores the nuances of human nature within a hyper-capitalistic society. But what if I told you that the show gets way more personal than that?
In the show, one thing that grasps the attention of the audience was how eerily similar the behaviors seen in the show are to things we experience or partake in as participants within celebrity culture. In instances such as the kids taking a selfie with Homelander at the beginning of the pilot episode or when Queen Mauve is cheered on by adoring fans in an interview at A-train’s race, it almost seems as if there’s a mirror being held up in front of us by the show. When we follow our favorite celebrities on social media or go to their fan meet-ups, we exhibit these same behaviors of giving celebrities validation through the amount of attention we give to them in order to get a closer “connection” to them. In return, celebrities get a mega ego boost that can make them confident in both a good and bad way. The show makes it a priority to demonstrate how our relationships with celebrities in this kind of way can be damaging to society as a whole.
To start, the show displays how worship culture affects celebrities themselves. In real life, many celebrities have a plethora of publicists to manufacture the pristine images many public figures have today. However, as we’ve seen in recent cases with celebrities like Armie Hammer, this is nothing but smoke to hide the darker side of them that seems to eat away at their humanity (no pun intended) in our eyes. This truth is definitely no exception in the world of Vought. When Mauve gets outed by Homelander, Vought doesn’t hesitate to promote her and her on-again-off-again girlfriend, Elena, as a lesbian power couple for-profit and rainbow-themed granola bars. But something that makes the business move way more disturbing is how we, the consumers and fans, made this facade socially acceptable for our consumption, our entertainment. When Ashley wasn’t yapping about people eating her paella, she justified these problematic marketing tactics through statistics of what the public found acceptable at the time and formed their campaigns around them. It goes without saying why these techniques are unethical but when money is involved in the world of entertainment, it becomes a noose around the necks of companies like Vought so the unpredictable practice of authenticity is rid of.
But when our desires of what we want our public figures to be aren’t too busy causing them to call our favorite character a twink whilst having a mental breakdown, they also tend to backfire on us. It’s no secret that the hyper-capitalistic culture of Hollywood can have a negative effect on those who fall victim to it. However, ‘The Boys’ manages to show how predatory this culture that we’ve allowed to cultivate in our society really is by taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us. When Stormfront is introduced in season 2, her dialogue and mannerisms have exposed to us that celebrity culture can truly cause damage by taking our insecurities as a group and masking it in an agenda that encourages behavior that creates polarization within our society. This occurs after the intro of terrorist supes, who are BIPOC unsurprisingly. Her entire arc reinforced a common hidden truth that we are aware of in our society: Our country runs on insecurities. From the naivety of children to the disempowerment of the mentally ill, the spectrum of things that makes us weak against protecting ourselves from the dangers of the world is seen as marketing targets for equally predatory products of our society.
The full circle of our complicity of being both victims and perpetrators of pop culture is a major point of where ‘The Boys’ excel, Undoubtedly. By including minuscule details that are effects of the actions of both civilians and supes within the show, we are made to relate and reflect on how much control we really have within a materialistic society and how much of a role we can play within changing it as well.